If you’ve worked on a K-12 wireless network, you’ll know that one of the main customer careabouts is adapting to Common Core Standards. Online testing and BYOD places even higher demands on a high quality, high performing network. What exactly needs to be taken into consideration when designing these networks?

Join us tomorrow Wednesday, February 5 for a great, informational webinar packed with tips and tricks on how to design K-12 networks to optimize for Common Core. If you work in education IT or are a partner or network consultant that handles lots of K-12 school district deployments, this is the webcast for you. We’re starting at 10am PST and will run for about 45-60 minutes–and there’ll be a chance for you to ask questions directly to Cisco engineers.

What do IT and K12 Common Core Standards have in common? Forty-five states, the District of Columbia, four territories, and the Department of Defense Education Activity have adopted the Common Core State Standards. 100% of each of these states’ schools must update their network infrastructure to support the mandated online testing capabilities. Enter district IT.

Technology is a key component when it comes to achieving the objectives of these standards. The objective is to augment the learning experience through the use of wired and wireless devices and enhance skills such as communication, collaboration, research, critical thinking and tackling problems. The mandate is computer based assessments. This promotes more personalized leaning. The students are also acclimated to use technology effectively for productive life activities in the future.

The combination of common core standards adoption with BYOD or 1:1 initiatives, results in an exponential growth in addressing endpoints, bandwidth, and security. Schools are looking to upgrade their existing networks to be able to handle the current and future requirements of these standards.

Students bounding into schools touting the latest device is creating big problem for K-12 IT departments. How can schools support BYOD initiatives while securing these mobile devices and the student information embedded within them if IT staff numbers aren’t growing?

In his latest blog, K-12 BYOD. Secure Students, Determine Internet Access, and Yet Provide Awesome Network Performance?, Cisco’s Rahul Chohan discusses how Identity Services Engine policy deployment as a part of Cisco BYOD Solutions for K12 Education helps simplify mobile device security streamlines the IT security processes required to deploy BYOD. Rahul’s blog covers how ISE helps protect minors, ensure performance, and simplify IT over the wired and wireless infrastructure. How exactly can it do this? You’ll have to read his blog to find out.

So many students, so many devices, yet zero increase in number of IT staffers. The increasingly unbalanced ratio is enough to cause a few nightmares for any IT professional. Luckily, supporting student IT requirements, while remaining secure, has become a bit simpler with Identity Service Engine (ISE) Policy Deployment, part of Cisco BYOD Solutions for K12 Education. With ISE, IT staffers can quickly add and support student’s devices like laptops, smart phones and tablets and at the same time ensure the protection of student information access, dynamically control who gets access to what and provide optimal network user experience. You can be rest assured that we have your back while you balance it all.

Protection of Minors – Let’s face it – K-12 means we’re talking about minors, so we need to tread quite carefully. Extending network access across wired and wireless opens education to a world of innovation; yet it also opens the network up to security threats. 64% of parents feel it is a schools responsibility to effectively teach students how to use their mobile devices safely [Info graphic]. Protection of access to and access by students is a high-priority. It is critical to restrict access to confidential student records while making sure students get the right access to resources they need for learning. The ISE component of the K12 BYOD Solution protects student information through secure, role-based, application access – simply – over the wired and wireless infrastructure. Read More »

Today we’re talking tablets versus textbooks in the first of a series of blog posts inspired by cartoons. Does anyone have a good memory of their education textbooks? Textbooks are cumbersome… anyone disagree? Most textbooks are a bulky nuisance weighing down backpacks of elementary to high school students nationwide. What I’m wondering is: why burden shoulders and backs with textbooks when the solution is already present in mobile education? Cisco BYOD Solution for K12 Education transforms education allowing the freedom to go anywhere on campus with a mobile device and still perform the tasks you would on a wired network. Here’re my two cents on why schools should consider making the switch away from textbooks. Read More »

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